Jazz Road Tours supports three- to six-site tours at an array of venue types, often in rural communities and other areas traditionally underserved by the genre.
Donor Name: South Arts
State: All States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 12/01/2024
Size of the Grant: $10,000 to $100,000
Grant Duration: Grant Duration Not Mentioned
Details:
This artist-centric grant program—designed to support approximately 50 tours each year—is made possible with funds from the Doris Duke Foundation with additional support from the Mellon Foundation.
Program Priorities
- Providing jazz artists financial assistance for performances/tours that increases their ability to earn income by connecting with a diversity of communities in traditional and non-traditional venues
- Giving artists business development tools to advance their careers beyond subsidies and grants. The goals are rooted in equitable pay and artist-centric programming as core values.
Key components of Jazz Road Tours
- An artist may apply for a three-to-six site tour comprised of connected (contiguous) dates at an array of venue types anywhere in the U.S and its territories.
- Jazz Road believes that through a logical route of tour dates, the artists will experience the continuity and momentum of repeat engagements, solidify developing music, and establish band identity/sound through working with the same personnel over the course of the tour.
- Jazz Road also will prioritize applications that include engagements in rural areas or that reach typically underserved communities, especially those that lack opportunities to present live jazz.
- Applicants that make a compelling case for how the tour will impact their careers in new ways are more competitive.
Funding Information
Artists may apply for grants ranging from $5,000 to $15,000 to cover eligible expenses. This may include $2,500 for various non-musician personnel. As of January 2024, South Arts has added childcare as an eligible expense that can be requested as part of the available $2,500 available for non-musician personnel expenses.
Eligible Expenses
- Performance fees: the equitable amount the artist/ensemble will normally charge for a touring engagement fee such as the one planned. Fees for a road/sound/tour manager can be included.
- Travel (ground and air)
- Hotel/Lodging
- Meals
- Backline equipment for artists which the presenter is not providing.
- In addition, up to $2,500 may be used for non-musician personnel to support artists on tour.
Eligibility Criteria
- Eligible Artists
- Only individual artists (as an individual, an artist-led nonprofit organization, or an artist-led corporation) may apply to this program. An eligible artist is:
- A professional jazz artist, working solo or working with a composer-led or collective jazz ensemble which consists of 2-10 musicians;
- Age 18 or over and not currently a full-time student;
- Based in the U.S. or its territories, and is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident (non-residents may participate in a tour, but not be paid with Jazz Road Tours funds)
- Only individual artists (as an individual, an artist-led nonprofit organization, or an artist-led corporation) may apply to this program. An eligible artist is:
- Eligible Tours
- Eligible tour routing will span three to six sites on contiguous dates.
- Funds are for artists to stay on the road and not return home. Funds are not for one-offs. Flexibility is possible around three-day spreads in between dates, or to avoid shows on Monday/Tuesday (slow evenings), if the band remains on the road.
- The tour must reach three to six sites, and either cover a total distance of at least 250 miles or more or reach at least one site which is 250 miles from the applicant’s home base.
- Tours must occur within the designated dates for each grant cycle.
- Eligible tour dates must take place in the U.S. or its territories.
- Tours can be within one state, cross state-lines, and/or travel to multiple regions.
- The tour request can be for a portion of a larger tour, so long as all dates are in the U.S. or its territories.
- Engagements must be for public performances.
- Shows can require admissions, suggested door amounts, or be free.
- Engagements can be for multiple nights so long as at least three separate venues are included in the application.
- All presenters—regardless of size or financial contribution to the tour—are expected to make significant efforts in promotion and/or create other opportunities to attract new audiences and fill rooms.
- Eligible Venues
- Eligible venues include but are not limited to:
- Nonprofit and commercial established jazz presenters and clubs
- Performing arts centers, theaters, and concert halls
- Universities, colleges, and institutions of higher education
- Jazz festivals
- Local arts agencies/councils
- Radio station live segments
- Artist spaces
- Community centers
- Churches, synagogues, mosques and other places of worship
- Embassies
- Galleries
- Museums
- Listening rooms and libraries
- House concerts
- Open-air markets
- Retail and civic/municipal events
- Social scene hotspots.
- Eligible venues include but are not limited to:
For more information, visit South Arts.
